Naomi Hirahara

No nosso boletim eletrônico de janeiro, o Discover Nikkei pediu o envio de histórias sobre o Oshogatsu. Convidamos os nossos leitores nikkeis de todo o mundo para nos mostrar, através de fotos e palavras, como eles deram as boas-vindas ao Ano Novo. Recebemos várias histórias escritas em inglês, japonês e português. Uma narrativa, escrita por Justin Inahara (inglês), foi tão longa que tivemos que publicá-la separadamente. O restante se encontraabaixo para a sua leitura. Divirta-se!

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Medidas Desesperadas da Mulher in-Chanto
Por Naomi Hirahara

Teve vezes que eu fiz ...

Ofuji Matsugoro wiped the sweat off of his forehead as he and his fellow carpenter, Kuninosuke “Kuni” Masumizu, took a break from their woodworking project inside the Veerkamp family’s barn on Gold Hill. Led by the family’s German patriarch, Francis, the Veerkamps were plentiful. By last count, Ofuji thought that there might be at least six children, all boys. One baby was just born; Ofuji himself was the older father of an infant daughter, Sakuko.

His fellow Japanese countryman, Kuni, was more than twenty years younger than him. Kuni, in fact, was about the same age as Francis ...

Keiko Shinshi hadn’t been feeling well for days. 

Her husband, Tatsutaro, thought it was because the last mulberry tree in the colony had died. Their silkworm room seemed like a gravesite, with the remains of shriveled up caterpillars lining the floor. A few cocoons were hanging from trees branches that his wife brought in. It was quite a barbaric process, with the cocoons being dropped into boiling vats of water so that the silk exteriors could be removed. In other words, the silkworms were cooked alive.

The production of silk had been Keiko’s consuming activity ever since they ...

Among the Japan-born Wakamatsu colonists, Makoto and Kuni were the strongest English speakers. As a result, when the colony’s founder, John Henry Schnell, announced that he would be taking a trip to San Francisco to meet with some Japanese envoys, as well as do research into future agricultural exhibitions, he asked these two men to accompany him.

Makoto was elated. He had a visible scar in the middle of his face, a remnant from a failed battle to save their beloved castle in Japan, but one of his roommates, Kintaro, suffered from more psychic wounds. Kintaro had tried to ...

Okei Ito hated mosquitos. In the California inaka, they seemed to swarm everywhere, breeding in water collected in surrounding ditches. In these same ditches, old miners, still fueled by the twenty-year-old dream of striking it rich, spent hours panning for gold.

She wasn’t used to all the mosquitos. She, like the other Wakamatsu colonists, were from northern Japan. Even in the middle of summer, it was cooler back home. Light rain would even fall at times. In contrast, the weather in Gold Hill was hot and dry. Those water-filled ditches, those were the culprits. If it weren’t for ...